Photo by Polashphotography, Creative Commons, via Flickr. A week before Christmas, I received this note: “The lovely Edna St.
In early December, The Buck in the Snow and Other Poems was carefully packaged and sent priority mail to Maine, where Winifred’s son lives. Vincent Millay and other poets to her family, her book, the book she held in her hands and likely recited from, needed to be with the family. For a woman known to recite poetry by St. By this time, I’d grown rather fond of the little volume of poetry, knowing the story of its first owner and having reread it several times. He asked if I might consider selling the book to him. Then I received an email from Winifred’s son. Title page from Winifred Donlea’s copy of the bookĪlmost two years passed. Usually, a search for a name of a book owner stops in a dead end. I was left with the charm of the story and the gratification of knowing that my interest in book inscriptions had led to this fascinating account. The conversation about Harry Thornton Moore and Caresse Crosby went offline. Among Crosby’s many accomplishments is the invention of the brassiere. His comment triggered another comment from a professor at Amherst College, who was researching a writer and publisher named Caresse Crosby, for whom Harry Thornton Moore was the literary executor. on the eve of her final destination, which was Ireland, where she planned to stay for the remainder of her life.” The character Auntie Mame, from the book and the film, was somewhat like Winifred Donlea. He also said that she “led a flamboyant and peripatetic life traveling and living all over North America, western Europe, and Africa. Winifred married a second time, and the writer was her son from that marriage. Louis, and I wonder if that’s the connection for how Winifred’s book ended up in the local antique shop, where I found it two or three years later. Carbondale is less than two hours from St. Moore eventually became a professor at Southern Illinois University-Carbondale. My mother was a schoolteacher, a principal of public and private, primary and secondary schools and a university professor.” The writer went on to say that Donlea’s first marriage was to another writer, Harry Thornton Moore, and that they married on the first day of spring in 1933 with the money he earned for his first published poem. Vincent Millay, Chaucer, Shakespeare, and many other poets. Winifred Donlea from Barrington, Illinois is my mother. Two years later, a comment showed up on the post: “Your story is a very personal gift for me and my family.
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